switch402 Use Cases: Pay-per-Call Web Scraping, Screenshots, Search and PDF
Pay-per-call web tools for agents, paid over x402 in USDC on Base and charged only on success: page to markdown for $0.008 per call ($0.003 per call on /v1/scrape/lite), screenshots from $0.008, web search for $0.008 and PDF to text for $0.008. Here is how teams and agents use them.
- Web scraping for AI agents
Give your agent a scrape tool it can pay for by itself. switch402 answers an unpaid call with HTTP 402 and x402 payment terms; the agent pays $0.008 USDC on Base from its own wallet and gets the page back as markdown. No signup, API key or monthly plan required. It also speaks MCP at api.switch402.com/mcp.
- URL to markdown for RAG
Turn any public URL into clean markdown for chunking, embedding and retrieval. One call returns url, title and markdown in JSON. The /v1/scrape/lite endpoint costs $0.003 per page, and you pay only for pages that come back, so your cost is set by the pages you actually ingest.
- Scraping API without a subscription
Most scraping APIs sell a monthly plan whose credits reset each month whether you used them or not. switch402 needs no plan: each successful page costs $0.008 (or $0.003 on lite), paid per call over x402 in USDC on Base. Nothing to cancel. If you prefer a balance, optional prepaid packs and a $10 monthly lite plan are available, and nothing expires: leftover balance stays on your key.
- Price monitoring
Track prices on public product pages without a monthly scraping plan. Fetch each page as markdown for $0.008 per successful call, find the price in the text with your own parser, and alert when it changes. Watch 20 pages or 2,000; you pay per check.
- LLM-ready markdown
Need one page inside a prompt right now, not a crawl pipeline? One call turns a public URL into markdown with its title, ready to put in an LLM context window to summarize it, answer questions about it, or let an agent reason over it. $0.008 per successful page, paid per call over x402.
- Screenshot API without a subscription
Capture a public web page as a PNG with no monthly plan, signup or API key. /v1/screenshot returns the visible 1280x800 viewport, JavaScript rendered, for $0.008 USDC on Base, and /v1/screenshot/full returns the whole scrollable page for $0.012. Each call is paid over x402 and charged only when an image comes back.
- Web search API, pay per call
Give your agent a search tool it can pay for by itself. /v1/search returns up to 10 ranked results with title, URL and snippet for $0.008 USDC on Base per call, paid over x402. No signup, API key or monthly plan, and you are charged only when at least one result comes back.
- PDF to text API for RAG
Send the URL of a public PDF and get its text back page by page, ready to chunk and embed. /v1/pdf costs $0.008 USDC on Base per call, for up to 50 pages and 10 MB, paid over x402 with no subscription or API key. You are charged only when text comes back.
More API pages
- URL to markdown API
Send a public URL, get the page back as clean markdown with its title. /v1/scrape/lite costs $0.003 per call and /v1/scrape $0.008 per call, paid over x402 in USDC on Base, with failover between providers. No signup, API key or plan required, and a failed page costs nothing.
- Web scraping MCP server
One remote MCP server for web data: POST https://api.switch402.com/mcp (MCP Streamable HTTP, no sign-in). Its tools/list returns nine tools: scrape, scrape_lite, map, metadata, screenshot, screenshot_full, search, pdf and quote. Each paid tool costs its own price per call in USDC on Base over x402, charged only on success.
- MCP web search server
Give an MCP agent a web search tool. The search tool on https://api.switch402.com/mcp takes a query and returns up to 10 ranked results with title, URL and snippet for $0.008 USDC on Base per call, paid over x402. You are charged only when at least one result comes back.
- Full-page screenshot API
/v1/screenshot/full captures an entire public web page, top to bottom, JavaScript rendered, and returns it as a base64 PNG for $0.012 USDC on Base per call, paid over x402. Need only what is above the fold? /v1/screenshot returns the 1280x800 viewport for $0.008.
- Extract URLs from a website
/v1/map reads a public page and the site’s sitemaps (robots.txt Sitemap lines or /sitemap.xml) and returns the same-site URLs it finds, deduplicated, up to 1,000 per call. $0.001 USDC on Base per call, paid over x402, charged only when URLs come back.
- URL metadata and link preview API
/v1/metadata fetches a public HTML page and returns what a link preview needs: title, meta description, canonical URL, language, OpenGraph and Twitter tags and parsed JSON-LD blocks. $0.001 USDC on Base per call, paid over x402, charged only on success.
- Scrape a docs site to markdown
Turn a documentation site into markdown files for an LLM or a RAG index in two steps: /v1/map lists the site’s URLs ($0.001 per call, up to 1,000 URLs) and /v1/scrape/lite converts each page ($0.003 per call). You pay for one map and the pages you actually convert.